| |
| I LIKE the hunting of the hare | |
| Better than that of the fox; | |
| I like the joyous morning air, | |
| And the crowing of the cocks. | |
| |
| I like the calm of the early fields, | 5 |
| The ducks asleep by the lake, | |
| The quiet hour which Nature yields | |
| Before mankind is awake. | |
| |
| I like the pheasants and feeding things | |
| Of the unsuspicious morn; | 10 |
| I like the flap of the wood-pigeon’s wings | |
| As she rises from the corn. | |
| |
| I like the blackbird’s shriek, and his rush | |
| From the turnips as I pass by, | |
| And the partridge hiding her head in a bush, | 15 |
| For her young ones cannot fly. | |
| |
| I like these things, and I like to ride, | |
| When all the world is in bed, | |
| To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, | |
| And where the sun grows red. | 20 |
| |
| The beagles at my horse-heels trot | |
| In silence after me; | |
| There ’s Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot, | |
| Old Slut and Margery,— | |
| |
| A score of names well used, and dear, | 25 |
| The names my childhood knew; | |
| The horn, with which I rouse their cheer, | |
| Is the horn my father blew. | |
| |
| I like the hunting of the hare | |
| Better than that of the fox; | 30 |
| The new world still is all less fair | |
| Than the old world it mocks. | |
| |
| I covet not a wider range | |
| Than these dear manors give; | |
| I take my pleasures without change, | 35 |
| And as I lived I live. | |
| |
| I leave my neighbors to their thought; | |
| My choice it is, and pride, | |
| On my own lands to find my sport, | |
| In my own fields to ride. | 40 |
| |
| The hare herself no better loves | |
| The field where she was bred, | |
| Than I the habit of these groves, | |
| My own inherited. | |
| |
| I know my quarries every one, | 45 |
| The meuse where she sits low; | |
| The road she chose to-day was run | |
| A hundred years ago. | |
| |
| The lags, the gills, the forest ways, | |
| The hedgerows one and all, | 50 |
| These are the kingdoms of my chase, | |
| And bounded by my wall; | |
| |
| Nor has the world a better thing, | |
| Though one should search it round, | |
| Than thus to live one’s own sole king, | 55 |
| Upon one’s own sole ground. | |
| |
| I like the hunting of the hare; | |
| It brings me, day by day, | |
| The memory of old days as fair, | |
| With dead men passed away. | 60 |
| |
| To these, as homeward still I ply | |
| And pass the churchyard gate, | |
| Where all are laid as I must lie, | |
| I stop and raise my hat. | |
| |
| I like the hunting of the hare; | 65 |
| New sports I hold in scorn. | |
| I like to be as my fathers were, | |
| In the days ere I was born. | |
| |
